COMPOSITION AND CONFIGURATION OF THE BOARD AND FIRM PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Corporate Governance is an obligatory adherence function in the present turbulent business environment. Evidence reveal that non-compliance have resulted collapse of corporate giants around the world. Composition and configuration (Board Structure)of the board of directors, as a corporate governance component, derived much attention; consequently, practitioners and academia have tried to identify the most appropriate board structure by linking this with performance. Extensive literature on board structure-performance relationship yields mixed results and disregards nonfinancial aspect of performance. This study tries to determine to what extent the structure of the board affects financial and non-financial performance in listed banks, finance and insurance organizations in Sri Lanka which are exposed to continuous increase in complexity, risk and change in the industry, demanding for intensive corporate governance practices. It is aimed to identify the impact of the board structure on performance measured in terms of both financial and non-financial facets.Board size, non-executive and female director proportion, CEO/Chairman independence, accounting and market based coupled with non-financial performance indicators were employed to measure the comprehensiveness of the board structure and the performance respectively. Application of robust statistical techniques revealed that the relationship between the board structure and financial performance does not have a statistically significant relationship and contradicts the literature while board structure and non-financial performance revealed a significant relationship.